Something Priceless
by Heletherel
Summary: Basically a what-if story about the final book of the Hunger Games series. If Annie had died in the sewers instead of Finnick, what would Finnick have done to avenge her? Inspired by The Happy Song by Poets of the Fall. Oneshot! (for now, at least) Rated T for some...macabre-ness. Read and review! :3


President Snow was listening to a noise that he had just recently learned to hate. It was the sound of an alarm mingled with gunfire, muffled only by the thick but unsecured mahogany door that separated him from the source. From Finnick.

Reflecting on his situation, Snow looked down at his polished shoes, resting on his polished floor past the edge of his polished desk, and realized that this could be the last image he would ever look upon. Finnick could have already fired through the door and murdered him and he would be a ghost without even knowing it. But that hadn't happened. Snow only knew this because right now, he was still afraid. The alarm was still blaring.

Glancing back up, he focused on the many security screens on the wall to his left, displaying the carnage outside his quiet office. He was lucky that the cameras were still working; all of his other security systems had been fried in the recent bombing, including those which kept his doors locked. Scanning first one panel and then the next, Snow realized what he was doing and looked away before his mind began to count too many bodies against his will.

_HOW did Finnick do THIS?_

Snow had watched it all happen. He saw his men converge on the lone Victor like a pack of dogs on a stray cat. He kept watching, even as many of those men were gunned down and speared, out of the pure desire to watch Finnick die. Now he looked away, focusing on a tall glass of water on his desk. Its contents had been turned pink by the blood from his mouth sores.

At this point, it had become obvious to him that Finnick would not be meeting his end today. It seemed as if some magic being that Snow had never believed in was guiding Finnick's moves; shielding him from harm.

_Just…die?_

Snow wished he'd invested in better equipment for his guards.

Finnick looked almost supernatural through the security camera. His hair whipped about him as he dashed and leapt from enemy to enemy, creating brief, bright-white flashes on the black and white screen. All his limbs stretched taut as he burst into another flurry of death-dealing. His hands clenched onto his weapons with wrathful strength; his shoulders rolled; his arms swung; his back curved; his hips swerved with every stong and steady step. Snow had begun to notice, long ago, that each move the Victor made was gracefully in step with the low, despairing sound of the alarm. He had become the tangible form of that mournful noise. He had lost everything.

He had lost Annie. She had died in the sewers in his place at the maws of the mutts that hissed Katniss's name. She had died and saved him in the process, and he had forged on past his remaining allies, powered by mad will and a burning desire to claim his vengeance before being consumed by his own wrath and lost to the abyss that is insanity.

Finnick chucked his gun at one of the guards and began to manipulate his trident, his lone ally, with both hands, twisting it over his head one moment and back and forth across his body the next. He twirled his arm at his side and extended it with a snap, halving the spine of a nearby Peacekeeper as the center tip of his trident exploded through his armor and body. Retracting it with both hands, Finnick let the momentum of the pull swing him across the room and decimated the crowd of enemies with a single, giant, horizontal arc of sharp, swift metal.

"_Taste-that…puppets!_" The words were followed by a deep breath and an angry, frustrated scream so piercing in its pitch that caused the pink water in Snow's room to shake in its container.

Snow heard the yell from behind the door. It could have just as easily been his own heartbeat that shook the water. Only now had he realized the imminence of his own confrontation with the broken young man on the other side of that single mahogany barrier.

At that moment, the door was pounded open with a single kick.

On pure instinct, Snow ripped open the middle drawer on the right side of his desk and grabbed the pistol inside, firing blindly at the doorway until he realized that it would be wiser to conserve ammo and stopped.

_Finnick…_

Snow looked down the top of his pistol to find that a figure still stood tall in the doorway. It was moving towards him.

Snow began to fire again and didn't stop until his gun was empty and light in his hand.

Rearing back his arm as he prepared to throw the weapon, Snow looked through a layer of dissipating smoke to find that the figure he had shot was one of his own Peacekeepers, who appeared upright but hung limply in the arms of someone else. A corpse had taken all the bullets in Snow's gun.

Now that corpse was tossed aside and Finnick shut the door behind him.

"Your fear makes you stupid, Snow," the Victor mocked.

Snow hurled the pistol into the air, aiming for Finnick's head. The victor caught the projectile in his teeth, then spat it onto the ground. Stepping towards Snow with menacing elegance, a sway that bore a certain lethal appearace, he held the severed head of another Peacekeeper; its face was half covered by a gas-mask.

"Boy, do I hope that your death will be as satisfying as this one's." Grinning hollowly, he sheathed his trident in the sling on his back and ran his hand under the severed head, displaying it with almost comical emotion. "To tell you the truth…I never really _liked _him. He was always a little too…heartless? Murderous? _Blind?_"

Finnick ripped away the gas mask with his free hand to display the scarred, sagging face of one of Snow's most loyal, ruthless Peacekeepers.

"Marius?" Snow breathed, immediately recognizing the dead man's hideous countenance. That face had stricken fear into the hearts of his enemies on many an occasion. Marius had been well known for killing without need, but his loyalty, and his exceptional skill in all things violent, was what kept him in the president's favor. Even Finnick, an experienced killer in his own right, should never have been able to best him.

"How did you…"

"Didn't. Annie did it for me." Finnick's words were followed by a mocking smile that lead Snow to believe he was only joking. A moment later, that smile was covered up by Marius's mask. It owner's bare head was promptly punted across the room, where it first thudded against one of the surveillance screens, blackening it, and then landed with a bloody splat on the marble floor below, rolling slightly for a few moments before going still.

"I like this mask," Finnick idly remarked, his voice made hollow by the filter he spoke through as he looked in his reflection on the black screen. "I've gotta say, this all-black, 'mystery soldier' look really just…suits me." Striking a vain, almost feminine pose, with one hand at his waist and the other behind his head, he glanced over at Snow with his seawater eyes, freezing the president with fear.

"Think it looks good on me?" Finnick asked in that old purr that used to be his voice, letting the hand behind his head fall back to his side as he stared his enemy down. "Or would you like me to take it off…slowly?"

"Finnick-"

"Silence!" The gas mask ricocheted off Snow's shoulder with sudden, terrifying force, jarring the president into an almost primal state of fear as he looked back at the uncovered face of his nemesis. Finnick was seething with rage.

"_I didn't ask you a question, Snow!_" The victor ironically roared, stepping forward as if straining against the invisible leash that was his sanity. He was so ready to rip the man in front of him apart.

"_Did I? Did-I-ASK-you-a-question?! _" A long moment of strained silence followed the angry words. A strange new look began to come over the victor's face.

Snow could only watch through disbelieving eyes as Finnick's sudden rage simply melted into soft but growing laughter. His head hung low, covered by fiery hair as if to mask the disturbing image of his smile of glee. It appeared that he'd just heard the most hilarious joke. Snow began to wonder if Finnick had been messing with him all along, if this was all just a calculated means of terrorizing him.

"You're really funny, president," Finnick laughed, his words so sincere that they sounded borderline-sarcastic. His behavior was becoming more and more like that of a child.

"You're just so funny when you're scared."

_Is this all just a means for revenge?_

Snow took a deep breath, trying to solidify enough courage to face the man that stood before him, still chuckling quietly behind shaking hands.

"What do you want, Finnick?"

Finnick's laughing died off as he heard the question.

"You want to kill me, don't you? It's… understandable…perfectly understandable. I have not been kind to you or your loved ones. You want _revenge_…don't you?"

"No." Finnick's reply was little louder than a breath. "I want…I-"

His voice suddenly gave way to a silence, save for the alarm, that embraced the entire room for many moments. He was crying. Snow was reaching for another pistol strapped to the underside of his chair. The paranoiac inwardly thanked himself for keeping so many hidden weapons in reach at all times. Maybe he could kill Finnick right here, all on his own-

"You know what I want, Snow?!" Finnick shouted, startling the old man into motionlessness. The president's jaw quivered after a moment, but he couldn't bring himself to form a single word of response.

"I don't really want to kill you. I want you to bring Annie…and me, back to _life_. I want something impossible, not immediate. I want something _priceless_, not worthless."

The alarm blared twice before another word was spoken.

"You know…what happened to Annie…" Snow's words were more of a statement than a question, and trailed off before he could make anything important of them. "You want her back?" He finally asked. "Such a thing…it _can _be d-"

"No. The destructive creature that you are…you can _never_ repair the damage you have done. If I forced you, you might make some mindless mutt or imitative machine that _calls_ itself Annie, and might _look_ like her, but her soul is too pure to ever be recalled. I will never get what I truly want. My best chance at getting something close would be to shoot myself right here, I suppose. _Then_ I might be with her. Away from you, at least."

"You really think that…then, you might see her again?" Snow tentatively asked. His expression was unreadable, but his thoughts were crystal clear to Finnick Odair.

Suddenly, the victor lashed out with his arm, sending a coil of rope under Snow's desk before yanking it back. The rope had been tied like a noose, and the loop was tight around the handle of Snow's hidden gun. With a flick of his wrist, it was in Finnick's hand, and his finger curled around the trigger as if about to strangle it.

"_Shut up,_ Snow," Finnick growled, jamming the gun towards his enemy's face. "I'm sick of your manipulative words. _You know…_" he began to shout, "I was thinking of saving you for Katniss…sparing you so that they _all _might enjoy watching your miserable death." Then Finnick's voice abruptly dropped to a whisper. Leaning towards the president, he said, eyes wide,

"But I'm running out of patience for them, and for you, because right now…_Annie's_ telling me to kill you."

**Hi, it's Heletherel.**

**If you liked this story, be sure to check out my other HG oneshot, (it's pretty similar). Or you can try my HG crossover, the Slender Games, if your a fan of the Slender Man mythos. Again, please review. I would like to know if there's any way I could improve my story.**


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